Pig Roast, Butchering and Stone Weapons Test

This is a very late post. This event actually took place at the end of May. My brother organized a pig roast at my place the week before his wedding. We had never roasted a pig before but my brother researched how to do it online.

We started Friday night by digging a pit in my backyard in the rain. With three of us it didn't take too long. We then lined the pit with scrap stone counter top slabs and added additional rocks to the bottom.


Early Saturday morning we started a fire in the pit. We let it burn for 2-3 hours to make sure the rocks were red hot.


While we monitored the fire, our friend Jason acquired the pigs. They were freshly killed and cleaned that morning. The pig we bought for roasting weighed about 80 lbs.


We stuffed it full of meat and vegetables. On the right side of the picture there is a chicken stuffed with a Cornish game hen stuffed with garlic. We also had squid stuffed with carrots and bison sausage. Other people put hot rocks inside the pig to help cook it thoroughly, but I think they might be wasting space where other food can go.


After we stuffed it, Jason sewed it up and then we wrapped it in foil and chicken wire. The foil was mainly to keep it clean and moist. The chicken wire helped keep it in one package when moving it.

Once we had it all prepared, we shoveled some dirt on the fire to put it out and create a level surface to rest the pig on.


Then we laid down freshly cut grass as another barrier against dirt. On top of that we laid the pig.


More grass on top.


Then we shoveled dirt on top to seal in the heat. We continued to add dirt where ever we saw steam escaping. We allowed the heated up rocks to cook the pig for about 7 hours.


When we removed it, we were very pleased with the results. The pig was completely cooked. Because there was no direct flame and all the moisture was trapped, the meat was very tender and juicy.


The other meat and vegetables inside were also pretty well cooked.


A slice of squid stuffed with carrots and bison sausage.


While the pig cooked for 7 hours, we butchered a 330 lbs pig. We strapped its legs to a long pole and four of us carried it over our shoulders like you would see in a movie. We rigged up a tripod with some long logs and hung it for butchering.


Before we started butchering it we tested some primitive stone weapons. My brother wanted to test the effectiveness of the Macuahuitl he made. A Macuahuitl is a wooden sword lined with flakes of obsidian. According to written accounts by one of Cortes's men, an Aztec warrior cut off the head of his horse with one.

Because the way pig was situated, he had to kneel to take a swing. He also had to be careful not to hit the tripod. Despite the less than ideal positioning, his first swing cut through to the bone. A few more swings and some sawing removed the head. The Macuahuitl is truly a deadly weapon and I imagine it could decapitate a man without too much trouble.


Next I gave it a thrust with my obsidian spear being careful not to damage the precious bacony parts of the animal.


Despite the tip being dull it penetrated pretty deeply without too much effort.


Andrew K shot my dacite pointed arrow and to his credit struck home on the first try despite the low quality of its construction.


Like the spear, the arrow penetrated pretty deep.


After our weapons testing, Jason led the crew in butchering the pig. Most of the meat went towards making bacon. Since then I've tried a few slices and it is delicious. There will definitely be more pig roasting and butchering in the future.

Glass Buttes Trip - Fall 2009

Last weekend we made another trip to Glass Buttes. This time we had a bigger crew. In total there were ten of us in three vehicles, but the five crammed into the Honda were off on their own once we got there. We saw them once a few hours before we left to go home on Sunday.

The crew I hung with is pictured below: Shawn, Andrew K, Shaun, Andrew P and me. I guess I should have been named "Sean" to keep the pattern going. :) In the background you can see Big Glass Butte.


When not cooking various non-refrigerated pork products, we spent most of our time on my favourite hilltop gathering and breaking rock.


I love this hilltop because it offers modest-sized surface rocks for easy picking or mystery-sized underground rock for some extra effort. It's odd because as you walk around it's mostly grasses, shrubs, and dirt but then every 60 yards there is a stream of rocks running down the hill.


Sometimes when you dig you get a nice reward for not too much work. Shawn found this monolith partially excavated. After some work he pulled out a big'n. Sometimes you dig and hit just the tip of an iceberg and work on it for hours with nothing to show for it.


Here Shaun teaches his friend Shawn the principles of flintknapping.


Andrew K studying his rock to decide where to make the first strike.


Saturday afternoon The Andes ("Hot Fuzz" reference) and I drove to another location where a different type of rock was available. Dacite is like obsidian but a little harder and less brittle. We collected a lot of it. We collected enough to make my car bottom out trying to get from the quarry to the main dirt road. We had to unload the rock to get my car out.

In the picture below, Andrew K and I reduce the big rocks down to usable pieces. This reduced the overall weight of the load while, in theory, still allowing enough material for a nice finished product.


In then end we each got enough rock to last for awhile. I'm excited to get to work on the dacite. There is just so much to do at the new place especially since hunting season started last Friday.

These pictures are from my new camera. Tonight I should have internet access at home. So now I have no more excuses for not posting more often.

Obsidian Spear

A couple posts ago, I showed the spear point I finished and talked about the spear shaft I harvested. Over the past weekend I finally put it all together. The shaft dried out nicely with no cracks and the bottom end straightened out like I planned. Pictured below is the finished product.



To prepare the shaft I removed the bark and smoothed the whole thing with a draw knife. I removed wood to make the diameter comfortable for my hand and shaved down knots till they were smooth. I then sanded the whole thing. After cutting out a deep notch I stained the wood with black walnut dye. To add some style I scorched in some black bands using a heat gun. This could have been done with open flame as well but a heat gun makes it easier. I used a piece of soda can to cover the places I didn't want to scorch which gave me pretty nice straight lines. Finally, I rubbed in some rendered fat to moisturize the wood.



Hafting in the point was pretty easy. I used my trusty pitch mixture of 50% pine sap and 50% ground up charcoal to seat the point in firmly. To secure it more I then wrapped it with sinew. Finally, I coated the sinew with hide glue to make it water resistant.



What will I use this for you might ask. Probably nothing. Some day maybe I'll hunt with it. It's also handy in case of a home invasion.

How'd you like that comin atcha!

New Knives

My brother and I have been getting involved with the local Trackers Northwest organization. They offer many different classes including survival, martial arts, homesteading, medicinal plants, and all kinds of other cool stuff. Today we helped teach flintknapping and animal skinning for a free event. About ten people showed up to learn what the organization offered.

I used the opportunity to finish up an obsidian spear point. I'm pretty happy with it, but I wouldn't mind if it were a bit longer.



Brian, one of the instructors, took us down to the park across the street where many trees had been cut down. There I cut a six foot limb from a downed tree to make my spear shaft. I took the bark off it tonight and have it clamped to a shelf to try to straighten a few bends as it seasons. It'll probably be awhile before I can haft in the spear point. I want to make sure the wood dries slowly so it doesn't crack.

I also finished two obsidian knives this weekend. The first is pictured below. The handle is Vine Maple stained with black walnut dye.



This little guy is a different color of obsidian with some brown color in it. The handle is an antler tine. I drilled out the inside of the tine so the haft of the knife is hidden inside. You can see a thin band of pitch between the point and the tine.

Glass Buttes 2

My brother and I drove back to Glass Buttes a couple weekends ago. This time we decided to drive around and map out the area so we knew where different varieties of obsidian were. We stopped at a campground and found this gigantic pile of debitage. 

When walking around one area I stumbled upon a small quarry with exposed rock. You can never tell how big a rock you have until you pull it out. We pulled a few nice size rocks out and then started excavating a huge one.

It turned out being the tip of an iceberg. We were a little bummed about not unearthing the entire thing.

Then my brother decided to spall it while it was in the ground and ended up with the biggest spalls I've ever seen.

We loaded my car up with over 400 pounds of rock and drove home. Now we have a room dedicated to storing our rocks. We plan to get some shelves to store it eventually.

Here are a few of the pieces I've been working on the past month. Only the small point at the bottom left and the knife have been pressure flaked (sharpened). I plan to work the rest into more refined products eventually. Most likely they will be spear points.

Here is a close up of the knife. The handle is made from Redheart wood.

I hafted the blade into the handle using pitch made from sap and charcoal. I then wrapped it with deer sinew dipped in deer hide glue.

Glass Buttes

August 20th I drove from Portland to southeastern Oregon about an hour east of Bend. I met my brother and his two friends at Glass Buttes, a mountainous area composed partially of obsidian. They were nearing the end of their road trip from Washington, D.C.. We met there to get our hands on beautiful, free obsidian straight from the source. We were used to paying $1-$3 per pound for the stuff and there it was free and plentiful.

The first night we set up camp and then drove to the closest spot on our map to try to quarry some rock before dark. With pick and shovel we dug in existing pits and the progress was slow. Matt took a hike to reconnoiter some other sites. He discovered that it wasn't necessary to dig to get good stuff. There were places where cantaloupe size rocks were just laying about.

The next morning we drove to one of these sites. On top of a hill there was an open quarry filled with large chunks of Silver Sheen obsidian that had been left by previous diggers. We spent most of the morning and afternoon sitting around the quarry working the rock into smaller pieces. We were determined to take as much rock home with us as our cars could handle.

Matt reducing a rock into a biface at the quarry.

Here I was reducing a large piece with a view of the high desert in the background.

My brother Andrew dug into the wall of the quarry and pulled out several huge pieces, some weighing 50 pounds or more.

Here I was holding one of the large rocks.

Prior to the trip I had worked on maybe five rocks of the large size that was commonplace there. I was always nervous because I had paid money for the rocks and only had a few of them. At Glass Buttes there was absolutely no pressure. If I messed up I could just pick up another rock for free. That state of mind along with advice from Matt and Andrew and the hours of practice there improved my skills considerably.

Later in the afternoon Matt and I drove around the area looking for other types of obsidian. There are many names used to describe the different coloration in the obsidian so it was hard to tell exactly what we found. Based on the pictures on the www.neolitics.com we found Tiger Stripe, Brown, Midnight Lace, Mahogany and Black. The bulk of what we gathered was glossy black and opaque black which some call "Black Butter" because of how nicely and easily it flakes.

Before we left on the the third day, we gathered everything together to get a group shot. From left to right (Andrew, Me, Ryan, Matt)

In my next post I'll show pictures of some of the pieces I've made since that trip.

Arrowheads

This weekend I spent several hours flintknapping. I focused on making arrowheads. The weather was sunny and hot, but I took dips in the pool often to cool off. Every time I work on this skill I do my best work so it's pretty fun. I worked with several different materials.

The white piece is made from chert. The rock is very hard and takes a lot more pressure to push a flake off. It's pretty easy to mess up so it was nice to finish an arrowhead. The piece is only about 3/4 of an inch wide so it's not ideal for hunting.

The gray piece is dacite also about 3/4 of an inch wide. The black one is made from obsidian. It's a little over an inch thick so I could hunt with it. The last two are made from glass. I was trying to make the big piece into a spear point until I dropped it. I didn't expect it to break so easily.

Material from left to right (penny for size reference, chert, dacite, obsidian, glass bottle bottom, glass slab)


This obsidian is translucent.


I'm still working on my notches. Ideally the notches near the bottom of this piece would be two or three times deeper in.

Obisidan Knife

I've wanted to make a knife or spear point for a long time. Until a couple days ago I never made a point longer than a few inches. The first problem was to get a long enough piece of rock to work with. I started by knocking a long thin spall off a roundish nodule. From there I knocked piece after piece off making very few mistakes for once. I took a few pictures on the way to the finished product because I was afraid I would mess it up.

I switched to pressure flaking a little sooner than I should have. I could control the accuracy of the flakes I pushed off so much easier than when striking the rock. The problem is that the flakes I took off weren't as long and thick as when striking. I was too afraid to ruin the piece with a misplaced strike though so I picked up the ishi stick. The consequence was a thicker, duller blade than I hoped for. Near the tip it's probably a 2/1 or 3/1 width to thickness ratio. That makes it good for stabbing things but not so good for slicing. By the way, I don't plan to do either with this guy so don't worry. The finished point ended up being about 4 1/2 inches long.



After finishing the point, I selected an antler from my stash. I sawed of the tines at a nice wide spot. I put the antler in boiling water to soften up the inside of the antler. After taking it out it was pretty easy to scrape out the inside with some metal tools. I also filed down a groove in the sides since the rock was wider than the antler. When fitted together the blade fit about 1 1/4 inches into the antler handle. Ideally it would've been a little deeper into the handle, but I was satisfied with it.



After whipping up a batch of pitch as I discussed in my last post, I poured it into the antler handle. At the same time I heated up the blade over the Jesus candle so that the knife would have holy powers. I then jammed the blade into the handle.

As the pitch overflowed I molded it around all sides of the blade and handle. As the pitch cooled it became very easy to mold. Below is a close up of the finished product showing the black pitch.



The picture below shows you the overall size of the knife. The blade is now approximately 3 inches long. The blade feels very secure inside the handle.